Beyond the suffering, we see the pictures of the survivors, brave people who must now pick up their lives and move on. The pictures from the town of Banda Aceh on Indonesia's Sumatra Island show residents standing in queues for six hours to obtain bottles of clean water. Some survivors had no food or clean water for more than seven days. Others with apparently minor scrapes and bruises have faced amputation of limbs — due to delay in medical treatment. Other photos show crates and boxes of supplies and equipment sitting on airport tarmacs, waiting for transport to areas in need. One major airport was closed for many hours due to a landing plane hitting a stray herd of livestock that had drifted onto the runway.

Suddenly we see that the logistics of rescue and recovery constitute a huge problem involving O.R. in the large, meaning not only the narrowly technocratic aspects but also political, social and cultural issues related to working in foreign countries with all their unique cultures, traditions, rules and regulations. We only can hope that those in charge of the logistics of recovery are well-equipped to do the job. Many of us, I am sure, wish that we could be there on scene to help.

As operations research professionals we have a unique ability to frame complex problems and organize approaches leading to good solutions. Our best work has derived over the years from seemingly intractable real-world problems such as the logistics of rescue, recovery and now also rebuilding, as is being carried out in South and Southeast Asia. To grow and flourish as a profession we must continue in that spirit — to apply our vast arsenal of tools including the ability to frame and formulate problems to help solve important real-world problems.

The Case for Non-Ph.D.s


Internally among us, it is not a question of practitioner vs. academic. I am convinced that the best theory comes from the most difficult practice. Key theoretical results from queueing, linear programming, network flows, dynamic programming and search theory were driven by the need to solve real problems. To continue in that tradition, we must not allow ourselves to self-partition into "doers" and "thinkers." Many of us should be both. And those who view themselves as thinkers-only should be informed of pressing real-world problems that require priority research attention. In that way, the best minds can be focused on the most important problems, a nice allocation of scarce resources!

In that spirit, I believe that we should welcome more O.R. professionals working in industry as INFORMS members. At meetings and in publications such as OR/MS Today and Interfaces, they could inform us of pressing problems in their own professional practice, problems that, if framed, formulated and "solved" by on-campus folks, could be of huge benefit in practice. The INFORMS membership is now about 75 percent Ph.D.s. In contrast, the highly respected IEEE is roughly equally divided among bachelors, master's and doctoral graduates. Since O.R. is primarily a graduate program in most universities, it is doubtful if we can match the IEEE distribution. But we certainly can strive to increase our numbers of O.R. master's graduates. Nationally, we graduate many more O.R. master's students than Ph.D.s. Yet, only about one quarter of INFORMS members are from this group. Why? We seek to find out.

Later in this first quarter of 2005 we will be posting on the INFORMS Web site a customer needs questionnaire seeking to learn more about this hidden population — their needs and aspirations related to professional societies. We invite all current INFORMS members — Ph.D.s and master's graduates — to complete the questionnaire. But we also need your help in identifying those who are not INFORMS members and who have degrees in O.R. or related fields and/or who do O.R. practice. We need to identify them and have them also complete the questionnaire. Only in that way can we determine "customer needs," meaning perhaps new products and services that if offered with INFORMS membership would attract these people to join INFORMS. The potential benefit of this is not only a growing professional society but also one that creates a virtuous cycle connecting those in industry with on-campus researchers — thereby improving the selection of problems on which to carry out research. Additional details about completing the questionnaire will be in the next issue of OR/MS Today.

Back to the tsunami victims. It is said that one can infer much about the people, their surroundings and their condition from their behavior in queues. The first pictures of survivors meeting those arriving with relief supplies shows desperate small mobs of people with hands stretched out, hoping to be among the lucky ones getting much needed food, water and related basic human supplies. We must recall that the existence of a queue implies the presence of a shortage. In our lives, the shortage is usually comparatively trivial, often the shortage of real-time numbers of servers to handle the number of customers present. In disasters, the shortages can be life-threatening. What is encouraging is that as I write this column (Jan. 6), the queues for water, gasoline and related supplies have transitioned from chaotic to orderly first-come, first-served queues, with people waiting patiently over many hours for the needed supplies. Their willingness to accept such social order is a positive sign that some sort of stability and social cohesiveness is returning — one of the first steps in rebuilding shattered lives and societies.

To learn more about O.R.'s potential role in such disasters, we plan to use some limited INFORMS discretionary funds to invite two or three professionals involved with designing and managing the logistics of the tsunami relief effort to come and speak with us at upcoming INFORMS national and international meetings. More on that as the situation evolves.

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